Partum
by Kelly123
Summary: She knows a lot about fire, and even more about hurt, but this is something completely different. ONE-SHOT.


_Hunger Games…sigh._

_I love you, don't get me wrong…and I will most definitely be in line to see that movie when it comes out (probably at midnight, if we're being totally honest), but part of me is scared that going mainstream is going to turn this lovely trilogy into the horrific mess that is Twilight. Ugh. _

_I don't like to share my fandoms._

_But I shall share my fanfiction._

_This one is weird. And I don't own anything but the cradle, because my Papaw made it for me and it's sitting in my parent's attic until I have someone of my own to use it. Yup…enjoy!

* * *

_

And I feed her, but only because it is a necessity. A non-negotiable.

Because to do otherwise would be unthinkable, would undermine the very basis of the kind of person I've given so much to be.

But I don't want to, and it scares me.

She cries and the sound of her…it hurts. But not how he thinks, like it should hurt a mother to hear her child cry out in need for her. And not how it must hurt him when I turn my head and pretend the noise doesn't reach my ears. It does though, even when we are in bed and asleep and he doesn't stir. But I hear her, I always do. And it always hurts.

It isn't the kind of hurt I feel when I have a nightmare, one of those nightmares, when I wake up in hysterics (still after all this time), and nothing but his soft words and strong arms can grab hold of me and bring me back out from hell. That hurt is a creature of its own, with a distinct heartbeat and fever and sickening resistance to the years, which everyone said would be the only cure for it. But they haven't. One thing has changed though…I hear those cries in my dreams too now, inhumane and all too familiar. The noise echoes in my head day in and day out, and sometimes it's hard to tell where the nightmare stops and my real life begins. That hurt never goes away, and part of me thinks it never will.

And it isn't the hurt that I get when I let my mind wander back to stolen afternoons and a boy with dark hair and olive skin. A boy I thought I could never stand to lose, but one who I gave away instead. One whom I find it strange to admit I miss far less than I thought I would (though I do miss him, in my own way). It isn't hurt like sadness, it isn't hurt like I'm sorry.

It's the hurt like whenever I would catch that wretched cat of Pr- hers, staring at me so resentfully. Hunger and hate so painfully depicted in its mangled gaze that made my skin prickle with unease. It's hurt like it's all my fault and I shouldn't have ever let this happen. It's hurt like I was too weak to stop it when I had a chance.

But I didn't, so it hurts like cleaning up my mistakes.

She is. A mistake, I mean. I could never tell him that, but I know it's the truth. He is too blinded by this irrational love to see it, so wrapped up in her tiny hands and fluttering lashes to see what I see when I look at her, those same hands empty and clutching desperately for something, anything to hold on to, but coming up empty. Those lashes closed over blue eyes wet with tears. Even her cries sound different to him. They must, the way he jumps to his feet instinctively whenever she makes the smallest sound, while I have to physically force myself to respond. Her cries seem to beckon him closer, while I fight the urge to run as fast as I can until their sound is drowned out. His eyes are soft, filled with love, even when her pitch reaches levels that seem physically impossible of being produced by lungs so small. I cringe at the sound, but he actually…smiles. He's happy, positively blissful in a way I've never seen him.

I'm jealous. I know this.

But not of her. I don't hurt because he loves her. I hurt because I don't. I'm don't begrudge her his love, but I'm jealous of him, of how effortlessly feeling this way about her comes to him. It confounds me how seamlessly his heart expanded to create a place for her just as big are the one he has for me, while mine churns and grates at the notion but stays its same meager size.

I knew it would be like this, to some extent at least. He was always been so much of a better person than I am, it wasn't difficult to imagine that he would be a better parent.

And I never wanted her, but I wanted him. I wanted to give him anything he wanted, to be able to do something for him when he has always been the one so unselfishly giving to me. The only thing that stopped me from losing my mind whenever I could feel her moving inside of me and the panic set in was the look of wonder on his face as he lay his hands against my abdomen, in awe of the movement that filled me with dread.

The feeling still has much too strong a hold on me, even now, after months of caring for her, of holding her to my body for hours each day while she feeds. I feel no motherly instinct kick in, no surge of affection spreading into my limbs, urging my fingers to caress her soft cheek or my lips to press lightly against that unbroken forehead. All I feel is that hurt, from the moment that she first cries, for the duration of her feeding…as I wait in awful anticipation for the next time I must take her into my arms. They don't shake as visibly as they did before, when her whole body would rattle against my chest as though at any moment they would give out from supporting her. I wondered, sometimes, what I would feel if that were in fact to happen. It never did, and I guess a part of me is thankful for that, glad that my sick curiosity was never tested. Familiarity has settled into my arms at the weight of her now, and the practiced routine has left me numb, but I can feel the tremors reverberated in battered muscle of my heart, as though the strain of trying to feel for her would break it.

Most likely, already has.

I'm breaking his, I know, a little at a time. He's nothing but gentle and sweet and understanding, but I know I'm pushing a patience that knows no bounds to its limits. I can feel it, even in the dark of night when we lie like siblings next to one another in our bed. I can see the muted rejection of his gaze through closed lids, hear the frustration in that barely audible exhalation when once again I turn my back to him. He would never ask, much less demand, anything of me that he thought I was unwilling or not ready to give. I know that much from experience, and that first time…he was so careful with me, so determined not to take advantage, to know that I was sure this was something I wanted. And I did. And part of me still does…but I can't. I can't take the chance again, of making this mistake twice.

I'm curled into a ball, as far away from his still form as I can get without falling off the edge of the bed, when I hear her stir. It's very late, and he dropped off to sleep hours ago after laying her to bed in the hand-me-down cradle that Annie passed on to us, but it is one of the nights when I can't force my tightly-wound body to uncoil and my mind to drift off. Too many worries and 'what-ifs' consume my thoughts for me to settle into sleep, and I've just given up on closing my eyes when there is a sleepy murmur and then a tiny gasp, one which causes a shiver to run down my spine. I bite my lip and take in a sharp breath, steeling myself for what I know I must do.

The sheets rustle behind me, and I realize he hasn't been sleeping as soundly as I thought. He shifts, almost closing the gap of cold mattress I have put between us, but leaving enough space that I can sense his body so close to mine and yet still not feel it.

"Hey." He says, and for a moment I can imagine that we are two children sleeping on a train, or in a cave, or anywhere but here. When did home become a place that made me wistful of such horrid times?

"She's awake." I tell him, and when I hear my own voice I hate how weak and defeated it has come to sound.

"It's okay to be scared." He murmurs, a tentative hand on my shoulder. "I'm scared for her too, all the time."

Fear.

The feeling is all too familiar to me, but at the same time the sound of it catches me off guard. I know how to fear, how to worry myself into a frenzy about the safety of those I love. Does it feel like this, is it the same hurt as lying awake at night and trembling in the dark? Am I afraid for her? Is that what this hurt is?

It doesn't feel right.

"I'm not…I don't think…" I shudder, sitting up and moving away from him, letting the sheets drop in a rumpled heap of the bed between us. "That's not it. I'm not afraid _for_ her…I'm afraid _of_ her."

I say the last part in a whisper, scarcely able to believe I have admitted such a thing to him. It sounds terrible, and I am grateful for the darkness which hides his reaction from me. And mine from him. Tears, hot with shame, fill my eyes, and I furiously try to blink them away. He must hate me now, he who loves me so much more than I could ever deserve, who is so full of light and good that the thought of being afraid of one's own child would never, ever, even rear its ugly head…

He should hate me. I know I deserve that more than his love. No child should have to endure a mother like me, one who cannot provide anything but the most basic of human needs.

I can't love her, but I can feed her. And so I do.

My eyes have adjusted enough to the moonlight that I make the short trek to the cradle without the aid of any light, my footsteps making no sound as I pad across the floor. Silver-tinted moonlight gleams in through the open curtain and I can see her, wide awake and squirming inside the hand-hewn cradle which rocks gently with her fidgeting movement. I can see enough to tell that something isn't right.

Her mouth opens at the sight of me, but no sound other than a breathless whimper comes out. Her dimpled hands reach out towards mine, and I see the sheen that has collected in the creases of her chubby arms. I lift her into mine and the sensation is wrong, terribly, terribly wrong.

She's much too hot, a scorching burn igniting as her skin comes in contact with mine. I'm confused, and after a moment I wrestle with my nightgown, doing the only thing I know I'm good for. I yank the cloth down from my shoulder and hold her to me, but her head turns away, refusing to feed. She struggles weakly, pulling away from the heat of my body while at the same time reaching for me and my numb comfort. As much as I have come to dread the sound of her cries I feel a desperation building within me as she stays so silent in my arms. The meager breathless sounds she makes down stab deeper than her high-pitched shrieks, and I feel the hurt, stronger than ever before, rip through me. I call out for him across the room, barely conscious of the strange sound my own voice has taken on. My arms are shaking again.

He's next to me in a moment, peering over my shoulder. "She's burning up, a fever." I say roughly, the words much too familiar on the tongue of a healer's daughter. I know what to do, but my mind is processing the scene too slowly to allow rational function, blurring my memories and muting strange instincts I didn't think I had. He presses a hand to her face, and I hear him hiss at the fire in her skin. I am aware that words are coming out of his mouth, and that he is speaking to me, but the sounds are slurred, and I can make no sense of them except for one thing.

Fear. He's terrified right now. And, I realize with a jolt so electric it is painful, so am I.

The door slams and he is gone, surely to find my mother and bring her back to us. It would have been better, quicker to bring the baby to her, but the feeling overwhelming me seems to have clouded his thoughts as well. Acknowledging my terror awakened something inside of me, and with a surge of regurgitated images rather than rational thoughts, I stumble into the bathroom with wobbling legs.

Shoving the stopper into place, I turn up the cold water as high as it will go until the babbling facet is deafening in the dark silence. Awkwardly using the hand not occupied with supporting her weight, I pull my pajamas the rest of the way off and kick them into a pile on the floor, making quick work of disrobing her and tossing her sweat-drenched clothes on top of mine. Her bare flesh directly on mine is even hotter than I thought, and as quickly as I can I lower us both into the arctic bathwater. My body screams out is protest against the freezing temperature, and so does hers, though much more literally. I clutch at her as the wails begin to wrack her searing, shivering body, scooping up the frigid water in my hands and dousing her from head to toe. I let out a deep breathe as she begins to scream, strange relief flooding me at the sound of the very thing I have come so accustom to dreading. At some point, my chattering teeth begin to form words, and as the fever begins to seep from her skin I realize what I am saying.

"Shh, Prue, it's okay. It's okay baby girl, momma has you. It'll be alright, shh…"

Prue. I've never said her name out loud before, never called her that. He is the one who named her, after my sister with the golden hair and the girl who jumped treetops like a breeze. He thought I would like it, that it might give me closure for the two lives which ended much too soon, but the sound of it, so new and yet so known, caused my chest to constrict in agony.

Or, it used to. Now it sounds perfect, like a lyric I've never sung before to a song that I've never heard. I don't know the melody yet, but the tune begins to strum gently in my still trembling heart. I will catch on soon enough. She is hardly newborn, but it is like I am seeing her for the first time, naked and pink and perfect. She is responding to the water, and some part of me thinks maybe to my voice, and as I lean back and sink deeper into the bath, she rests her cooling head against my chest.

I feed her, because this is what mothers do. I feed her because she's mine and I love her.

So this is how my husband and my mother find us. Just a mother and her daughter, wrapped in each others arms and completely lost in one another.

In love.

A family at last.

* * *

_If you were to reach through your computer screen right now, you would find that my forehead is also a bit warm. Someone has a bad case of baby fever, and writing about it is as close to a cure as I'm going to get for a few years, at least. So help to treat my illness, the Dr prescribed lots of reviews!_

_PS: Being as I am not a mother and have never experienced post-partum myself, this is all purely speculative. I hope I don't offend anyone with my fictional interpretation of what I'm sure is a devastating affliction. I drew inspiration mostly from a Molly Ringwald movie, "For Keeps?" which is probably not the most scientific of sources...  
_


End file.
